As computer technology has advanced, the demand for portable computer systems, such as laptops, has increased. Portable computers have dramatically increased the mobility of computing power for the computer user. Since the first portable computer, manufacturers have increased computer mobility by decreasing the size, weight, and power demands of portable computers while increasing the battery life for portable computers.
The monitors presently used contribute greatly to the overall size and weight of the portable computer. The monitor must be of a sufficient size, brightness, and clarity to provide the user with readable images. In order to achieve these requirements, monitors place a great burden on available power resources and are therefore a significant contributor indirectly as well as directly to the weight of the portable computer.
Typically, portable computer monitors utilize a liquid crystal display system. The liquid crystal display systems typically include a top plastic or glass panel and a bottom plastic or glass panel, having a liquid crystal display of thin film transistors and liquid crystal material therebetween. These systems also utilize a backlight system that typically includes a diffuser for passing light evenly to the liquid crystal display, a cold cathode fluorescent lamp (“CCFL”) for producing light, a reflector for directing the light toward the diffuser, and a light pipe located between the diffuser and the reflector to spread light to the entire surface of the diffuser.
The use of conventional CCFL liquid crystal display systems in the monitors of portable computers, however, creates a limiting factor in the continuing effort to reduce the size and weight of portable computers. CCFL technology has not kept pace with advances in other technologies that have reduced the size and weight of many of the other display components. Today, one of the major limitations in further reducing the thickness and weight of the display is therefore the CCFL illumination system.
Light-emitting diode (“LED”) technology offers attractive alternatives to the CCFL. LEDs are much thinner than the CCFL and do not require many of the weighty power supply systems of the CCFL. However, one LED is not sufficient to light an entire display. Furthermore, some LEDs may have a shorter operating life then a CCFL, and replacing an entire display due to a failed LED can be costly.
Thus, if LEDs are to become a viable alternative to CCFLs, an economical and practical solution must be found for a way to mount a large number of LEDs in a small space and for avoiding the cost of replacing an entire display when there is an LED failure.
In view of ever-increasing commercial competitive pressures, increasing consumer expectations, and diminishing opportunities for meaningful product differentiation in the marketplace, it is increasingly critical that answers be found to these problems. Moreover, the ever-increasing need to save costs, improve efficiencies, improve performance, and meet such competitive pressures adds even greater urgency to the critical necessity that answers be found to these problems.
Solutions to these problems have been long sought but prior developments have not taught or suggested any solutions and, thus, solutions to these problems have long eluded those skilled in the art.